Reviews, Stories, Whatever!

Menu

Monthly Archives: April 2015

I asked my Nan for this book for Christmas but unfortunately didn’t include the name of the author and she got me ‘Awaken’ by Rachel D’aigle which I must confess, I haven’t actually started reading yet. I bought this book when I got my first wage a couple of weeks ago because it’s been on my Amazon wish list for a few months now and I was desperate to read it!

So the story is told from the point of view of Maddie who lives in a digital world where everything is on computers so there’s no need to leave the house. Whether it’s go to school or on a date, people stay at home and don’t tend to go outside. Maddie’s okay with this, this is her life… Until she meets Justin who disagrees. He thinks there’s more to life than computers and prefers going outside and being around people. Suddenly Maddie finds herself almost agreeing with her – but with society and her parents telling her differently, who should Maddie listen to?

With a blurb like that I should’ve known what I was in for. It’s unavoidable, right? You guys must be getting sick of me ranting about romance in all of my reviews but seriously? There’s not one young adult book without romance? Whatever, I’ll get to that bit later.

Let’s start with Maddie – she’s okay. She’s not too irritating to read about I suppose. Maybe I liked her? To be honest, I’m not particularly sure what I thought of her. I agreed with her most of the time and she wasn’t a wet lettuce, she was an interesting character to read about. Who her parents were made the story more interesting but you’ll have to read it to know what I mean by that.

I really like the idea of the book as a whole because it’s an idea that’s plausible if you think about it. We already have the older generation moaning that we spend too much time on computers so is it impossible to say that in the future we won’t live our lives on the computer forever? I liked reading about the build up to why they had decided everyone should live their lives behind a screen and maybe I would’ve preferred to read about that, rather than what happened afterwards. Overall though, it’s a solid idea that I really enjoyed.

Now then. Let’s talk about Justin. Okay, he’s necessary to the story. Is the romance plotline necessary to the story? I don’t think so. That’s just my personal opinion, feel free to disagree with me, but Jesus Christ I have never had to read about someone so obnoxious and irritating who’s disguised as someone sweet and caring. The one flaw to Maddie’s character was that she was literally growing obsessed with him, which I’m glad one character pointed out because it was starting to annoy me. When they were together it was all about Justin. When they were apart it was about how much she was missing Justin. Come on Maddie, we’ve got bigger problems here!

I risk going into a rant here but he was honestly so irritating. He’d convince Maddie to talk about what’s on her mind, and then when she did he’d respond with things like ‘would you have said that before you met me?’ Probably – I’m sure Clare would’ve encouraged her to speak her mind, you little prick. Personally, I found him completely unlikeable.

I’ve just a quick look on Amazon at Katie Kacvinsky’s page and found there are at least two sequels to this book. The sad thing is that the synopsis for the next book looks really interesting but apart from the fact I’m not a massive fan of sequels, I just really can’t be bothered to have an entire second book hearing about how perfect Maddie thinks Justin is when quite frankly, I’d rather she talked about the actual problems she was facing maybe?

Maybe I’ll pick up the sequels, who knows? As for whether I’d recommend this book I would say yes. It’s a good story; Maddie’s interesting to a point… Perhaps a romance fan will like Justin more than me but Jesus Christ. Get used to them having the same conversation every single chapter.